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So we've got a few things coming out late April for ya. Really quickly wanted to say that we had a total blast at SXSW and wanted to thank everyone profusely for playing/attending/hosting. I'll have a proper post soon regarding SXSW with some news, but for now, here's a list of the four releases coming out in a few weeks. I'm offering a batch deal for all four titles for $30 even, which saves on shipping and allows you to enjoy all four titles at once.

I've been talking to these UK gents for a bit about doing something, and it's finally almost here. It only took me hearing a couple of songs online to drop them a line and ask them about doing a record, and I couldn't be happier. Taking from the great 20 Jazz Funk Greats website regarding "Dawn Lobby":

"A reassuringly pounding entry into 2011, Cold Pumas return is furnished with the same speeding metronomic abandon that made last year’s Jela so beloved among its cultists. Reverb drenched guitar peaks now find themselves mixed with half recognised post-punk riffs but, more significantly, the vocals that were once subservient to the thunderous machine of guitar and drums now glide up through the mix and, in a glorious twist, end the track in a ghostly Galaxy 500 reverie. Stunning. And this is the B-side!"

Listen to both tracks below, and peruse the nice things Pitchfork also had to say regarding the release.

Here we have the debut by Jimmy Vincent's Pope Anything out of LA. Four great tracks of cavernous pop/post-punk, look for PA to start cutting their teeth around LA and the West Coast in the near future. Listen to "Up Against the Walls" below, read some nice words, watch some old live footage. 7" artwork by Tim Presley of White Fence/Darker My Love/Strange.

I can't be happier to be releasing this. In the punk-rock prime of his youth, Ryan Rousseau (aka Elvis Wong) saw himself cutting his teeth as the drummer for the Wongs, eventually hooking up with Jay Reatard to play in the Reatards, and dividing his time between the former band in Arizona and the latter in Memphis. Ryan soon recorded the first Destruction Unit 7”, a blistering slab of synth-punk, which eventually led Ryan to Tuscon’s drony, synth-heavy Digital Leather. Ryan in turn filled in from time to time on drums for Jay and Alix’s Angry Angles, and eventually found himself recording two more LPs under the Destruction Unit moniker with help from Jay and Alicja starting up the southwestern punk act Tokyo Electron, and exploring his more melodic, post-punk roots with Earthmen and Strangers. After the death of Jay Reatard in early 2010, Ryan resurrected Destruction Unit, this time emphasizing more psych/kraut/desert rock influences on their first LP, Eclipse, in FDH Records. For their second LP, Sonoran, due out in April from Volar Records, the group has almost completely stripped away whatever synth-punk leanings they were holding on to, creating a purely “desert-at-night” psych/kraut/space-rock album best enjoyed on the long nightly drives through the barren wastelands of the Southwest.

Another fairly new, rising LA act, Dirt Dress make their vinyl debut here after a series of well-received cassette releases and offer up the ridiculously catchy "Alligator Lungs" in addition to "Weight of Time." They occupy some magical space of weird garage-pop and have been wowing audiences up in LA for some time, enough that they had a residency at the now-defunct Spaceland. Listen to "Alligator Lungs" below, read some stuff.

STREAM/ORDER/DL the debut limited clear LP Spilt Milk by
Irish punk-slop-power-pop trio Oh Boland
Formed in 2012, the trio of songwriter Niall
Murphy(Guitars, Vocals) Eanna
MacDonnchadha (bass) and Simon McDonagh (drums/vocals) came together to form Oh
Boland over the course of drunken pub crawls in their small town of Tuam,
Ireland.The band eventually recorded a
couple of EPs with Brian Kelly of So Cow, and began venturing out into Galway
City, leading to involvement with Dublin-based collective Popical Island and
their release of the Delphi split LP with fellow Ireland indie-poppers Me and My
Dog. The Delphi recordings brought them
together with producer Mark Chester, who makes his own music as Ginnels and
plays in No Monster Club. After the band realized they were sitting on a number
of songs, they decided to go back in with Chester to record this first
full-length, Spilt Milk, over the
course of two days over Halloween weekend 2014 in a cottage in one of the most
isolated parts o…

First off, a moment of reflection about the Oakland fires. I've been in my own state of shock and grief and am slowly getting back to focusing on this other stuff here. My thoughts go out to everyone involved. I had friends who were there that night and made it out safely; I had quite a few more who were close to going and decided not to. The first show I ever attended in the Bay was at a warehouse (the French Fry Factory), and the first show I ever played there was at the Ghost Town Gallery. I have more musical ties to friends in the Bay and Oakland specifically than anywhere else outside of where I live, and the creative freedom and resourcefulness of the music and arts community there is the richest that I know of in the country. There have been many thoughtful posts and articles regarding that scene in particular, the culture at large, and the nature of warehouse spaces like Ghost Ship. I was asked to do an interview for NBC San Diego and only agreed to help spread that messa…